Towards Ultimate Convergence of All Networks (TOUCAN)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Abstract
Global demand for broadband communications continues to increase substantially every year. A major factor contributing to this demand is the growing number of fixed and mobile broadband users, data-hungry applications like video as well as an ever-increasing number of network-connected everyday objects and machines. It is forecast that by 2020 the number of network-connected devices will reach 1000 times the world's population while data volumes transported over networks will progressively grow to Zettabytes and upwards.
These trends pose entirely new challenges related to data volume, granularity, end-to-end connectivity and reach as well as increasing heterogeneity in network technologies (i.e. wireless and wired), networked-connected devices (i.e. sensors, mobile phones, computers, TVs, Data Centres) and services (i.e. Tbps data transfer for e-science, ultra-low latency financial transaction, real-time media streaming, kbps for sensor-based monitoring). Addressing these challenges necessitates radically new network models supporting convergence of traditionally separate network technology domains and offering high flexibility and adaptability in data granularity and throughput.
TOUCAN aims to achieve ultimate network convergence enabled by a radically new technology agnostic architecture targeting a wide range of applications and end users. This architecture will facilitate optimal interconnection of any network technology domains, networked devices and data sets with high flexibility, resource and energy efficiency, and will aim to satisfy the full range of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements.
TOUCAN will realise its goals by including the network infrastructure and its control as part of the end-to-end service delivery chain. Important enablers will be that of separating the data and control planes, which will rely on Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles. TOUCAN will drastically evolve SDN to incorporate fundamentally new technology-specific interfacing and resource description followed by infrastructure resource abstraction, virtualisation and programmability. These features will enable any network technology and device to become "TOUCAN-ready" which means that the devices are programmable and interoperable. This is the foundation upon which the technology-agnostic feature of the TOUCAN architecture will be realized; thereby ultimate seamless end-to-end convergence will be achieved.
TOUCAN will revolutionize the way we build and operate communication networks in a similar way that computer networks and more recently mobile terminals were transformed from platform-oriented to platform-agnostic solutions (e.g. through Linux and Android) and will drive towards commoditisation of network devices. Any new technology generation, regardless whether wired or wireless, will connect to the TOUCAN network in a plug-and-play fashion.
Our research will open up a new network innovation eco-system, which will allow for the first time applications to compose, deploy and program their own virtual network infrastructures, as part of the service delivery mechanism to optimally support their specific and very diverse requirements. Such an environment will be able to adapt to challenging and unpredictable infrastructure and service evolution scenarios, meeting future application requirements.
This highly challenging £12M project will bring together an Internationally renowned team of academics for a period of 5 years, allowing in depth technical exploration based on holistic and radical thinking in order to achieve the project goals. 58 person years of postdoctoral researcher time are requested for TOUCAN while the Universities have allocated a further 30 person years or more of PhD students. The TOUCAN consortium includes an impressive list of external partners who collectively are committing critical and tangible resources in excess of £3.6M.
These trends pose entirely new challenges related to data volume, granularity, end-to-end connectivity and reach as well as increasing heterogeneity in network technologies (i.e. wireless and wired), networked-connected devices (i.e. sensors, mobile phones, computers, TVs, Data Centres) and services (i.e. Tbps data transfer for e-science, ultra-low latency financial transaction, real-time media streaming, kbps for sensor-based monitoring). Addressing these challenges necessitates radically new network models supporting convergence of traditionally separate network technology domains and offering high flexibility and adaptability in data granularity and throughput.
TOUCAN aims to achieve ultimate network convergence enabled by a radically new technology agnostic architecture targeting a wide range of applications and end users. This architecture will facilitate optimal interconnection of any network technology domains, networked devices and data sets with high flexibility, resource and energy efficiency, and will aim to satisfy the full range of Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements.
TOUCAN will realise its goals by including the network infrastructure and its control as part of the end-to-end service delivery chain. Important enablers will be that of separating the data and control planes, which will rely on Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles. TOUCAN will drastically evolve SDN to incorporate fundamentally new technology-specific interfacing and resource description followed by infrastructure resource abstraction, virtualisation and programmability. These features will enable any network technology and device to become "TOUCAN-ready" which means that the devices are programmable and interoperable. This is the foundation upon which the technology-agnostic feature of the TOUCAN architecture will be realized; thereby ultimate seamless end-to-end convergence will be achieved.
TOUCAN will revolutionize the way we build and operate communication networks in a similar way that computer networks and more recently mobile terminals were transformed from platform-oriented to platform-agnostic solutions (e.g. through Linux and Android) and will drive towards commoditisation of network devices. Any new technology generation, regardless whether wired or wireless, will connect to the TOUCAN network in a plug-and-play fashion.
Our research will open up a new network innovation eco-system, which will allow for the first time applications to compose, deploy and program their own virtual network infrastructures, as part of the service delivery mechanism to optimally support their specific and very diverse requirements. Such an environment will be able to adapt to challenging and unpredictable infrastructure and service evolution scenarios, meeting future application requirements.
This highly challenging £12M project will bring together an Internationally renowned team of academics for a period of 5 years, allowing in depth technical exploration based on holistic and radical thinking in order to achieve the project goals. 58 person years of postdoctoral researcher time are requested for TOUCAN while the Universities have allocated a further 30 person years or more of PhD students. The TOUCAN consortium includes an impressive list of external partners who collectively are committing critical and tangible resources in excess of £3.6M.
Planned Impact
TOUCAN aims to generate significant impact to Industry, the academic community and the general public.
The most direct impact will target the Programme Industrial Partners (BROADCOM, BT, NEC, Plextek, and Samsung). All Programme Partners have been engaged in the shaping of the TOUCAN vision, which they consider to be critical for their future technology roadmaps, as demonstrated by the significant amount of resources committed to the project (see attached letters). It is expected that new industrial partners will join the initial team as the research unfolds and TOUCAN is being established as a world-leading research project.
Industrial partners will benefit from having direct insight into the TOUCAN developments and they will be encouraged to provide advice regarding exploitation (i.e. through universities spin-out companies). In addition, our partners will host PDRAs in their premises and therefore have opportunities to guide the research and leverage skills developed within the project.
To engage the wider industrial sector, we plan a series of 5 Industrial Workshops during the Programme lifetime. To ensure broad industrial participation in these events, we will work closely with the Strategic Advisory Board (SAB: BBC, IBM, DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, iMinds, i2CAT, University of Leeds) and fora such as the ICT-KTN, the Local Enterprise Parnerships, Mobile VCE, GreenTouch, and EU technology platforms (e.g. Net!Works and Photonics21).
A further key activity to achieving sustainable impact will be contributions to industry standards (e.g. ITU-T, ETSI, IETF, TMF) and to a number of new SDN-focused standard bodies in which we will engage, including ONF, Open Daylight and Open Stack. Where standards and specification gaps exist we will look to initiate new standards or even create new working groups.
Technology demonstrations in the TOUCAN Lab will be another focal point for dissemination and impact. The TOUCAN Lab will offer an open ecosystem for broad experimentation among researchers, industry, service and content providers and users. Our goal is to build an active user group of our platforms and experimental infrastructure by making prototypes available under an open source license. We plan to utilize the close relationship with Watershed (http://www.watershed.co.uk) to reach user groups (i.e. creative and media industries) and communities (i.e. education) that can consume TOUCAN services and engage them through the Bristol City Council test network to demonstrate the benefits of the new technology platforms. Collaborative TOUCAN implementations, development of use cases, proof of concept testing will provide user groups and industry with instruments for exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of TOUCAN and make them advocates of the Programme vision.
The consortium will also build an array of activities targeting academic impact as described in "Academic Beneficiaries". In addition, TOUCAN will be an excellent platform for attracting and training PhD students and contribute to the longer-term needs of the industry by helping to develop much needed skills for the UK companies and the wider technology and research sector.
Our public engagement activities will align with both EPSRC's and the Universities' plans for delivering public impact. Academic teams will be supported to engage as STEM ambassadors for schools, community science events and also engaging with existing 'Headstart' activities. As the programme advances, we will aim to contribute to events such as the annual National Science and Engineering Week and Royal Society Summer Exhibition.
Throughout the Programme, we will work with the University Press Officers to develop press releases, which will announce relevant notable events and major scientific and/or commercial progress.
TOUCAN's outreach and impact targets will be delivered under the leadership of Prof Harald Haas who will be supported by the TOUCAN Project Manager.
The most direct impact will target the Programme Industrial Partners (BROADCOM, BT, NEC, Plextek, and Samsung). All Programme Partners have been engaged in the shaping of the TOUCAN vision, which they consider to be critical for their future technology roadmaps, as demonstrated by the significant amount of resources committed to the project (see attached letters). It is expected that new industrial partners will join the initial team as the research unfolds and TOUCAN is being established as a world-leading research project.
Industrial partners will benefit from having direct insight into the TOUCAN developments and they will be encouraged to provide advice regarding exploitation (i.e. through universities spin-out companies). In addition, our partners will host PDRAs in their premises and therefore have opportunities to guide the research and leverage skills developed within the project.
To engage the wider industrial sector, we plan a series of 5 Industrial Workshops during the Programme lifetime. To ensure broad industrial participation in these events, we will work closely with the Strategic Advisory Board (SAB: BBC, IBM, DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, iMinds, i2CAT, University of Leeds) and fora such as the ICT-KTN, the Local Enterprise Parnerships, Mobile VCE, GreenTouch, and EU technology platforms (e.g. Net!Works and Photonics21).
A further key activity to achieving sustainable impact will be contributions to industry standards (e.g. ITU-T, ETSI, IETF, TMF) and to a number of new SDN-focused standard bodies in which we will engage, including ONF, Open Daylight and Open Stack. Where standards and specification gaps exist we will look to initiate new standards or even create new working groups.
Technology demonstrations in the TOUCAN Lab will be another focal point for dissemination and impact. The TOUCAN Lab will offer an open ecosystem for broad experimentation among researchers, industry, service and content providers and users. Our goal is to build an active user group of our platforms and experimental infrastructure by making prototypes available under an open source license. We plan to utilize the close relationship with Watershed (http://www.watershed.co.uk) to reach user groups (i.e. creative and media industries) and communities (i.e. education) that can consume TOUCAN services and engage them through the Bristol City Council test network to demonstrate the benefits of the new technology platforms. Collaborative TOUCAN implementations, development of use cases, proof of concept testing will provide user groups and industry with instruments for exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of TOUCAN and make them advocates of the Programme vision.
The consortium will also build an array of activities targeting academic impact as described in "Academic Beneficiaries". In addition, TOUCAN will be an excellent platform for attracting and training PhD students and contribute to the longer-term needs of the industry by helping to develop much needed skills for the UK companies and the wider technology and research sector.
Our public engagement activities will align with both EPSRC's and the Universities' plans for delivering public impact. Academic teams will be supported to engage as STEM ambassadors for schools, community science events and also engaging with existing 'Headstart' activities. As the programme advances, we will aim to contribute to events such as the annual National Science and Engineering Week and Royal Society Summer Exhibition.
Throughout the Programme, we will work with the University Press Officers to develop press releases, which will announce relevant notable events and major scientific and/or commercial progress.
TOUCAN's outreach and impact targets will be delivered under the leadership of Prof Harald Haas who will be supported by the TOUCAN Project Manager.
Organisations
- University of Bristol, United Kingdom (Lead Research Organisation)
- University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (Collaboration)
- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Collaboration)
- Federal University of Espírito Santo (Collaboration)
- I2CAT Fundació (Collaboration)
- Plextek Ltd, Great Chesterford, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- BT Laboratories, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- Broadcom UK Ltd (Project Partner)
- Technology Strategy Board, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- Samsung Electronics (Project Partner)
- JANET UK (Project Partner)
- NEC Telecom MODUS Ltd, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- Bristol City Council, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
Publications


Aguado A
(2017)
Secure NFV Orchestration Over an SDN-Controlled Optical Network With Time-Shared Quantum Key Distribution Resources
in Journal of Lightwave Technology



Al-Samman I
(2016)
A framework for resources allocation in virtualised C-RAN

Alshaer H
(2020)
The UK Programmable Fixed and Mobile Internet Infrastructure: Overview, Capabilities and Use Cases Deployment
in IEEE Access

Alshaer H
(2020)
Software-Defined Networking-Enabled Heterogeneous Wireless Networks and Applications Convergence
in IEEE Access

Alshaer H
(2018)
Bidirectional LiFi Attocell Access Point Slicing Scheme
in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
Description | We have just completed the three years of this 5 year project. New technology resource description and abstraction models have been developed driving the cloudification of the network infrastructure. Key new innovations include software defined control for wireless technologies (WiFi, LTE, LiFi, MMIMO) as well as advanced optical technologies. Orchestration solution for intelligent end-to-end service automation have been demonstrated. The world's first Machine Learning integration with SDN control has been proposed and verified using the National Dark Fibre Infrastructure. The TOUCAN lab has been established allowing distributed experimentation across the 4 Universities partnership |
Exploitation Route | Yes, we are communicating our findings through conference presentations to the research community and industry |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
Description | It led to the creation of the spin out company: Zeetta Networks. TOUCAN also played a significant role in informing the UK strategy and subsequent funding on 5G Testbeds and Trials. Bristol has been one of the three UK Universities awarded funding to design, deploy and demonstrate an end-to-end 5G testbed by end of March'18. The Bristol testbed utilised many of the TOUCAN technologies including open hardware platform for convergence, multi-technology SDN controller and service orchestration solution. |
First Year Of Impact | 2018 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
Impact Types | Societal,Economic |
Description | 5G PPP View on 5G Architecture (White Paper) |
Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
Policy Influence Type | Participation in a advisory committee |
URL | http://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/5G-PPP-5G-Architecture-White-Paper-Jan-2018-v2.0.pdf |
Description | Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review |
Geographic Reach | National |
Policy Influence Type | Participation in a national consultation |
URL | http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-telecoms-infrastructure-review |
Description | UK5G Testbeds & Trials Programme |
Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
Policy Influence Type | Participation in a advisory committee |
URL | http://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65226... |
Description | 5G City |
Amount | € 6,000,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | 5G PICTURE |
Amount | € 8,000,000 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 762057 |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | 5G RuralFirst: Rural Coverage and Dynamic Spectrum Access Testbed and Trial |
Amount | £196,763 (GBP) |
Organisation | Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2018 |
End | 05/2019 |
Description | 5G UK Test-bed |
Amount | £16,000,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 06/2017 |
End | 03/2018 |
Description | 5G in Fire |
Amount | € 5,400,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | 5G-CLARITY |
Amount | € 1,165,020 (EUR) |
Funding ID | EC 871428 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 11/2019 |
End | 05/2021 |
Description | 5G-COMPLETE |
Amount | € 555,167 (EUR) |
Funding ID | EC 871900 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 11/2019 |
End | 11/2022 |
Description | 5G-VICTORI |
Amount | € 920,375 (EUR) |
Funding ID | EC 857201 |
Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
Sector | Public |
Country | Belgium |
Start | 06/2019 |
End | 06/2022 |
Description | FLAME |
Amount | € 6,900,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | Futebol |
Amount | € 1,500,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 05/2016 |
End | 05/2019 |
Description | Matilda |
Amount | € 5,400,000 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 761898 |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | Measurement-based resilient BGP routing - NCSC Fellowship (Lancaster University) |
Amount | £300,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | National Cyber Security Centre |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2020 |
End | 01/2024 |
Description | MetroHaul |
Amount | € 7,800,000 (EUR) |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2017 |
End | 01/2020 |
Description | TESTBED2: Testing and Evaluating Sophisticated information and communication Technologies for enaBling scalablE smart griD Deployment, EU H2020 RISE project |
Amount | € 1,462,800 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 872172 |
Organisation | European Commission H2020 |
Sector | Public |
Country | Belgium |
Start | 02/2021 |
End | 01/2024 |
Description | UNIQORN |
Amount | € 9,979,905 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 820474 |
Organisation | European Union |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 10/2018 |
End | 10/2021 |
Description | Ben-Gurion University, Israel |
Organisation | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
Country | Israel |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | British Council initiative to support collaboration between UK and Israel. This funding will support travel and workshop organisation (one at Bristol and one at Ben-Gurion) to plan joined research in the areas of telecommunication networks, cyber security and artificial intelligence. |
Collaborator Contribution | British Council initiative to support collaboration between UK and Israel. This funding will support travel and workshop organisation (one at Bristol and one at Ben-Gurion) to plan joined research in the areas of telecommunication networks, cyber security and artificial intelligence. |
Impact | Planned workshops in October and November 2020. |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Joint project application with Heriot-Watt/University of Edinburgh for DCMS 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme: Phase 2 |
Organisation | University of Edinburgh |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | TBC |
Collaborator Contribution | TBC |
Impact | TBC |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | University of Espirito Santo (UFES) |
Organisation | Federal University of Espírito Santo |
Country | Brazil |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Two visiting professors from University of Espirito Santo (UFES) working on SDN control frame work, NFV and use cases of TOUCAN project |
Collaborator Contribution | Joint publication on SDN control frame work, NFV for optic and packet network convergence . Development of a 5G use case for TOUCAN |
Impact | Publications: Trois, C., Bona, L. C., Del Fabro, M. D., Martinello, M., Bidkar, S., Nejabati, R. [20%]., Simeonidou, D., "Softening Up the Network for Scientific Applications",in Proc. Of 25th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing (PDP 2017): March 2017, |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | i2CAT Barcelona |
Organisation | I2CAT Fundació |
Country | Spain |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/december/catalonia-mou.html |
Collaborator Contribution | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/december/catalonia-mou.html |
Impact | Strategic collaboration between University of Bristol and i2CAT Foundation with a view to align on strategic vision on digitalisation of West of England Region in the UK and Catalonia, Spain, |
Start Year | 2019 |
Company Name | Zeetta Networks |
Description | Zeetta Networks is a spin-out company from the University of Bristol developing and marketing Open Networking solutions for heterogeneous networks based on Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) principles. |
Year Established | 2015 |
Impact | The company's main product is NetOS®, a Network Operating System which offers a "USB-like", plug-n-play management of all connected network devices and enables the construction of virtual "network slices" (i.e. separate logically-isolated sub-networks) for the deployment of B2B or B2C services such as Ultra-HD video distribution, City-wide Wi-Fi, Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M deployments, etc. |
Website | http://www.zeetta.com |
Description | 2018 International Workshop on Next Generation Green Wireless Networks (Next-GWiN 2018), University of Sheffield |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Next GWiN 2018 is the latest in a series of successful, international workshops that focus on the state of the art in the field of green communications. 5G is fast becoming a tangible technology with first deployments being prepared and the standard taking a clear shape. With new ambitious goals and high data rates of 5G, energy issues are now more important than ever. Attended by Dr Yu Fu (Heriot-Watt University). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://www.next-gwin.org/ |
Description | 5G & Beyond Day, 5GBerlinweek, 4th Nov 2019, Germany |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research (Bristol 5G Testbeds & Trials). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | 5G Layered Realities (March 2018) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Over the weekend of 17th - 18th March 2018, the University of Bristol's Smart Internet Lab hosted the world's first 5G public showcase in Millennium Square, Bristol. Demonstrations, talks and artistic experimentation combined in an exciting blend of technology and expression. This event ran in conjunction with Watershed & We The Curious. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/smart/events/layered-realities-weekend/ |
Description | 5G New Radio (NR): Why, How & Examples, Silverstone Technology Cluster, 11th October 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Adaptive User Grouping Based on EVM Prediction for Efficient & Robust Massive MIMO in TDD, CW Commercialising Millimetre wave Technology, May 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Baguette: Towards end-to-end service orchestration in heterogeneous networks |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | bstract-Network services are the key mechanism for operators to introduce intelligence and generate profit from their infrastructures. The growth of the number of network users and the stricter application network requirements have highlighted a number of challenges in orchestrating services using existing production management and configuration protocols and mechanisms. Recent networking paradigms like Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), provide a set of novel control and management interfaces that enable unprecedented automation, flexibility and openness capabilities in operator infrastructure management. This paper presents Baguette, a novel and open service orchestration framework for operators. Baguette supports a wide range of network technologies, namely optical and wired Ethernet technologies, and allows service providers to automate the deployment and dynamic re-optimization of network services. We present the design of the orchestrator and elaborate on the integration of Baguette with existing low-level network and cloud management frameworks |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | CEPT workshop on New Spectrum Solutions for Industry Sectors, May 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | COST IRACON Final Workshop, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 28th January 2020 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research (5G Testbeds: Bristol & Lund MaMIMO Examples). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
Description | Centralised BGP control, IETF 106 - BOF session, 16-22 Nov 2019, Singapore. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Nicholas Hart (Lancaster University) provided a talk regarding the above on behalf of the TOUCAN project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Demo: A WIM Plugin for DataPlane Broker (DPB), 7th OSM hackfest, 9-13 Oct 2019, Patra, Greece. |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Steven Simpson, Paul McCherry & Abubabkr Magzoub (Lancaster University) attended the above on behalf of the TOUCAN project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Enterprising Researcher workshop, Bristol |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | An enterprising attitude and enterprising capabilities will help researchers in their research, promoting creativity, innovation and business flair and will benefit any future career. Through this workshop, participants discovered that being enterprising is a fundamental aspect of being a researcher, and an essential aspect of the life long career aspirations for researchers. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), Annual General Meeting (12th April 2019) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Harald Haas (University of Edinburgh) was invited as a keynote speaker to this Consortium to present on 'LiFi - Wireless Networking using Light' |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | IEEE 5G Summit Glasgow 2018, The University of Strathclyde |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | In 2015, the IEEE Communications Society developed a 5G strategic framework based on the principles that embrace Industry's interests and priorities while integrating IEEE and ComSoc's objectives. In order to engage industry members with high value and innovative technologies, IEEE Communications Society is organising a series of global high impact one day Summits in relevant technology areas (e.g., SDN/NFV, 5G, IoT, Big Data, Cybersecurity, and so on). The first IEEE 5G Summit was held at Princeton University in May 2015, and has been followed by a global series of follow-on events. The 5G Summit in Glasgow, Scotland was held at the University of Strathclyde on Monday, May 14th 2018. This one day summit provided a platform for attendees from industry, academia, and government office and agencies to collaborate and exchange ideas in this emerging technology. The objectives of this Glasgow event were to provide a platform to educate, integrate and elucidate the various communities to support the evolution of standards and systems leading to the rapid deployment of new technologies and potentially new business models for 5G. Attended by Dr Yu Fu (Heriot-Watt University). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Istanbul, Turkey |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Harald Haas (University of Edinburgh) was invited as a keynote speaker to this Symposium to present on 'Using Light to Build The Future Wireless Nervous System'. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | IIT Madras Shaastra, October 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Harald Haas (University of Edinburgh) gave an invited lecture to the above on 'What is the Status of LiFi and What Comes Next?' |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | IWPC, RF & RAN Connectivity and Architectural Decomposition Workshop, 30th October 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research (Performance Optimization of sub-6GHz Massive MIMO). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Participation in the ITU Focus Group on Technologies for Network 2030 - Lancaster University |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | The Focus Group, intends to study the capabilities of networks for the year 2030 and beyond, when it is expected to support novel forward-looking scenarios, such as holographic type communications, extremely fast response in critical situations and high-precision communication demands of emerging market verticals. The study aims to answer specific questions on what kinds of network architecture and the enabling mechanisms are suitable for such novel scenarios. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
URL | http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/net2030/Pages/default.aspx |
Description | RF & Millimetre-Wave Symposium, Queens University Belfast, 18th October 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Invited talk by Mark Beach (University of Bristol) drawing on TOUCAN research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | TOUCAN Industrial Showcase Event, London |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Presented the industry and academic impact of TOUCAN's research innovations and solutions. The audience comprised of the TOUCAN academic team from the University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and Lancaster University, TOUCAN's industrial partners, and also representatives from a wider industrial sector. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
Description | TOUCAN booth at ECOC 2019, Dublin |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The TOUCAN project team (including 14 volunteers) attended ECOC 2019 in Dublin. This was to promote TOUCAN's work to-date at a booth, which led to various fruitful discussions at the event and thereafter. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.ecoc2019.org/index.html |
Description | VNFDs and NSDs tutorial, 8th OSM Hackfest, 18-22 Nov 2019, Luca, Italy |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Abubakr Magzoub (Lancaster University) attended the above on behalf of the TOUCAN project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |